A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO MAKING A GOOD START AS A TRUCKER

 Trucking is one of the most misunderstood careers I know of.  It’s our own fault.  For the most part, we truckers are to blame.  We continually post very misleading information all over the internet.  How is it that so many of us don’t really understand the vital dynamics of our own industry?

I really enjoy helping people understand the path to success as a trucker.  I find it really disturbing when I see people, genuinely interested in a trucking career, only confusing themselves further when trying to research making a start in our career.  It’s part of my nature to want to help others succeed.  I find that natural tendency of mine to be in high demand almost daily.

Let me give you an example…

Recently while doing some shopping at a Wal-Mart, I noticed the young couple, with two small children, waiting in line behind me as I was checking out.  They had this look on their faces as though they wanted to speak to me.  I was wearing one of the many shirts I’ve been given by my employer, Knight Transportation.  Of course, it was emblazoned with their logo, and apparently it had caught their attention.  

This young wife was curious enough to ask me if I drove for Knight.  Once I had confirmed their suspicions, she confided in me their concerns about her husband’s recent entrance into trucking.  He was struggling, and they were convinced it was because of the company that he started with.  They were feeling like they were being taken advantage of, being treated unfairly, and not getting paid enough.  Does that sound familiar?  I can’t escape this stuff.  It searches me out, even at my local Wal-Mart!

I gladly spoke with them for a few minutes, but I could tell I hadn’t convinced them they could do better right where they were.  They had started with Schneider, a well established company with many successful drivers.  They were focused on the fact that they weren’t getting enough miles.  For them that was the company’s fault.  They mostly wanted to know, “How many miles is Knight giving you?”  It’s just a complete misunderstanding about this career.  It’s not that one company can or will give you the miles you need while the others can’t or simply just refuse to.

Trucking is a performance based business.  That is a long and well established fact, yet very few people seem to understand the ramifications of that.  When discussing the problems with this career the current trend is to lay the blame at “big trucking companies” and their evil plans to take advantage of young ignorant rookies.  The predominant theory is that they do this with low wages and restricting their ability to turn the big miles.  Any serious minded person contemplating these issues would have to see the error of this idea.  It makes no sense.  The whole idea is based on the false notion that these companies don’t want to pay out a lot of wages to their employees.

The truth is that they want their drivers making good money.  What better way is there to keep great employees on board?  They understand that completely.  Trust me, they need to keep great people moving freight in those trucks.  Of course no business can afford to pay its employees more than they produce.  That brings us right back to this whole idea of the trucking business being “performance based.”  Drivers get paid based on how much they produce.  That’s why we get “paid by the mile.”  Trucking companies make money by how much freight they can move - the more the better!  This all flies in the face of these claims saying these trucking companies are keeping their driver’s miles low so they can keep their wages low.  Actually they want us turning all the miles we legally can.  That’s how they make money.

Almost daily I see people struggling with decisions on how and where to make their start in a new trucking career.  Some of them have been doing research for months.  They organize spreadsheets and lists of priorities that they keep changing and adjusting based on whatever random complaints or unique compliments they just happened to read online that week.  They don’t have a clue whether any of these people actually know what they are talking about, but they take their words with authority and make vain adjustments to their spreadsheets accordingly.

I recently watched a person show us his latest list of companies that he wanted to apply to.  He had them categorized as his “top choices” and then two other subcategories that indicated the less desirable choices that he might have to consider if the “best ones” didn’t work out for some reason.  It wasn’t long into the conversation before he decided to reshuffle his list because he heard how well someone in our forum was doing at one of his less desirable choices.  One simple comment gave him reason to analyze things again and make needful adjustments to his list of prioritized considerations.  That is tiring, wearisome, and confusing.  That’s no way to make a good start at this.

Would you allow me to offer you a better way to make a great start at your new trucking career?  I have actual experience at this struggle, and you might be able to consider me an expert when I tell you how I know this incredibly positive way to achieve success as a rookie truck driver.  I made all the same mistakes when I wanted to get into trucking.  I covered all the trucking forums and read all the nonsense.  I took in and digested all the trucking commentary as best I could.

I took all that worthless information and formulated my top choices of companies.  I was confident they could set me up for success.  Lo and behold, none of them would have me.  They all “had better applicants to choose from.”  What?  That’s right.  Me, an ideal candidate in my own mind, rejected by all the top companies I had researched for months.  What was wrong with these corporate nut jobs?  I was sure I was destined to be the perfect trucker.

I ended up starting my very successful trucking career at Western Express.  Everywhere I looked on the internet said, “Don’t just walk away from this company - you need to run!”  That just goes to show you how much bogus information we truckers put out.  It’s like a non-stop river that can’t be dammed up.  It is out of control.  I fight an information war almost daily.  That’s why you can just wear yourself out trying to gather helpful information on this career.  Most of it just doesn’t make sense.  Truckers succeed based on their own performance.  There’s that nagging word again - “performance.”  It will dog you for your entire trucking career.  You might as well embrace it.  

I determined that I would be the most productive driver Western Express had ever seen.  I did that by being committed to the actions that would serve their needs for revenues, and making sure I was proactive in giving my support staff in the office the communication they needed to keep me consistently planned with loads.  How do you do those things?  

• Make sure you are willing to run whatever loads they give you.

• Make sure you are easy to work with.

• Don’t argue and complain with your dispatcher.

• Figure out how to always be on time, or better yet be early.

• Don’t hit anything.

• Master the H.O.S rules and manage your clock efficiently.

• Provide accurate ETA’s (estimated time of arrival) and PTA’s (projected time of availability) to your dispatcher so they have plenty of time to get your next load scheduled.

There you have it.  That was my strategy, and it works at every trucking company out there.  It won’t matter what name is on the doors of your truck.  Any rookie driver who can master that list will come out on top,  There’s no ambiguity and no confusion when you attack the challenges in this career with that approach.  Throw your spreadsheet in the trash.  You don’t have to re-prioritize any lists again.  This is a master list that will see you through the conflict.  Each item on that list is on the driver.  There’s no reason to try and make sure you are at the “right company” to set yourself up for success.  It’s all “performance based.”  There’s that phrase again, you might as well get used to it!

Mediocrity Reaps No Rewards

 I have observed a lot of truck drivers during my trucking career.  With both empathy and agony, I have listened to their tales of woe at the truck stops, lunch counters, and driver lounges all across this great country.  Can I speak plainly with you?  Most truck drivers are unhappy.  They feel maligned, mistreated, and just plain dis-respected.  For most of them, the rewards received are simply not worth the sacrifices and risks required to execute the job.  I have never fallen into that camp, and I am convinced there’s a reason why.

Let me also make it clear that when I was a rookie driver I listened to other drivers complaints and would often feel myself being lured into their unfortunate outlook on this career.  It seemed everything they said resonated with me in some form or fashion.  After all, who really wants to be away from their families for weeks at a time?  Is it really a nomadic dream life to sleep in a truck each night?  I knew the frustrations of just trying to find some place to park at ten o’clock at night, and yes, I found those things very frustrating myself.

I still remember this time I was tarping a load of steel at about midnight.  I noticed the driver next to me who had just picked up his load before me.  As he was tarping, he was dragging his feet and his shoulders hung low as though he were completely dejected.  I still remember him raising his voice to speak to me.  “This job sucks the life out of you,” he declared.  He said it with authority, as if I should certainly know and agree with his assessment.  The absurdity of his statement struck me hard.  I was quite happy to be there at midnight.  The coolness of the evening was refreshing to me while laboring at my chosen profession.  As I was stretching my tarps tight, I was excitedly running calculations in my head as to how I was going to use the split sleeper berth provision to enable me to get my load delivered early.  That way I would be available for a really nice load early on Friday.  I knew once all that came together I was going to put an additional 400 dollars on my paycheck that week.

Your outlook has a profound effect on your outcome.  The driver who is convinced “this job sucks the life out of you” will be plagued with poor results.  His paychecks will always seem insufficient, his efforts will invariably be extremely laborious, and his satisfaction with his job will be nonexistent.  I have always felt it very important that people should find satisfaction and fulfillment in their occupation.  It doesn’t matter to me if you are a simple laborer pushing a wheelbarrow through a muddy construction site.  If you are determined to be the best at commandeering a wheelbarrow, you will find yourself quite happy with your results.  There is simply no way to have a fulfilling career when you are miserable at it.  Your miserableness blinds you to the possibilities that lie waiting for you to capitalize on them.

Goals have a way of encouraging you to reach higher levels of performance and satisfaction.  I am very much a goal oriented person.  The truck driving career appealed to me because it followed a model that I had repeatedly taught to my employees during the years that I was a business operator.  That model is sometimes referred to as “performance based pay.”  Basically the employee gets to determine how much money he makes by producing effective results.  As a person reaches the initial goals they have set for themselves, they begin to see how much more potential they actually have.  I remember when I started to earn around a thousand dollars a week as a truck driver.  That seemed like pretty decent money for what I was doing.  Then it also opened my eyes to how much money I was leaving on the table through my own inefficiencies.

I had reached my goals, but there was still more that was almost begging to  be accomplished.  I could see it now.  There was no reason it had to stay beyond my reach.  It took me a few years, but soon enough I had almost doubled that income that I was content with before.  By reaching my goals, I could see the potential that was still out there.  I wasn’t bound by my own self declared delusions of how miserable this career was.  I was free to pursue excellence and prove I was capable of obtaining it.  There’s nothing so liberating as freeing yourself from “group think.”  

Truckers really limit their own satisfaction and income potential by commiserating with each other all the time.  When is the last time you heard a fellow driver tell you how he’s set a goal to increase his income this year by ten thousand dollars?  More than likely you heard something like, “I am looking for another company.  This one just doesn’t have the miles I need to make a living.  They treat me like I’m just a number, and they could care less whether I’m making it or not.”  Most truck drivers hamstring themselves with their own low aspirations.  They are mediocre performers who don’t recognize their own potential.  I can assure you that their employer has ample opportunity for them to succeed.  Very seldom is it actually the company’s fault when a driver is a low performer.  Does that bother you when I say that?  I am convinced that is a hard truth we all need to learn.  Mediocrity reaps no rewards.  Almost every truck driver I know has switched companies multiple times, only to switch again when they find they are still disillusioned.

You won’t catch me telling you how bad my company is.  They gave me  opportunity and I gave them results.  This is the formula for success at trucking.  The driver has to produce.  The burden is upon the driver, and it is a great opportunity for him to prove his mettle.  Drivers who settle for less get less.  Never settle on mediocrity.  Motivate yourself to excel.  I promise you, success at trucking is within your grasp.  Courage reaches out and takes hold of success.

What I Have Learned From This Pandemic

You don't need an army or even a weapon to bring a nation to it's knees.

People can be controlled by fear.

Fear is as serious a debilitating contagion as any virus.

You can be esteemed an expert, yet change your ideas on your expertise almost daily.  No one will notice.  You'll still be considered an expert.

During a disaster you can declare someone an "expert," parade them on national media, and fear will drive people to follow their suggestions in a cult like fashion.

When being questioned on live T.V. before an anxious nation, it's quite acceptable for an "expert" to answer most of the questions with something like, "We just don't know."

Vanity and fear do strange things to people.  A surgical face mask is neither a fashion statement or a reliable means of preventing a viral infection.  And when you wear it riding low so it's merely covering your chin, it's even less effective at either one of those objectives.


The millions of Chinese people you see on television wearing masks is not proof that masks help stop the transmission of the Corona virus.  They've been wearing masks in China for a couple of decades now.  The air pollution is so bad over there that they do that to protect their lungs.

I've discovered that every day I touch my face an average of 10,387 times.  It's miraculous that I'm still alive.

It's strange that "non essential workers" were forced to stay at home.  Among the groups of people who have still not returned to work are our members of the House of Representatives.  We've known for years how non essential they are to our well being, but somehow that awareness has finally caught up with them.

Trucking Will Survive This Pandemic

I know some of you are wondering if you should try to get into trucking at this point in time. Others may be concerned about their jobs. What's taking place in the country is crazy in my opinion. But, I want you to know that trucking will survive this madness.

The wrecking ball that has been unleashed on our economic system is destroying lives, families, legacies, and businesses. It's very sad to witness the incalculable destruction. Trucking will take some hits. We're going to see some smaller companies close up. We will also probably be surprised by a couple of the big companies suffering, and reducing their operations, or being absorbed into another large company. Cash reserves are going to prove that old adage about "cash being king."

Those things are normal adjustments during trying times. We will see them happen in the next few months. That does not indicate that trucking is a poor career choice at this juncture. Trucking jobs are available now, and still will be as the dust settles and things fall into realignment.

We are already witnessing supply chains being busted up, and that just compounds the negative effects on various suppliers. Closing restaurants is a great example of this. Food delivery is suffering and so are the vendors in that supply chain. They were specifically geared to supply restaurants, and their packaging is having to be completely re-tooled for grocery store distribution. What a mess!

There's a lot of volatility in the supply chains now. Prices are going to fluctuate wildly. If things stay on lockdown there will be too much truck capacity in comparison to demand and that's going to put tremendous downward pressure on freight rates. That always results in people selling trucks, and that results in the valuations of trucking assets decreasing. None of that is good for the industry.

The truth is that we are in a violent storm. We are also a necessity in times like these. This is not a time to be fearful. It's a time to show your resolve. It's a time to be a Top Tier Driver.

If you need or want a trucking job, I encourage you to be brave and jump into the fray. You will be rewarded.

If you're already employed as a driver I encourage you to be a top performer. Lead by example. Don't cower at what others fear. Lean into your profession with vigor and determination. Be effective. Be proficient. Be productive. Those are the drivers who stand the test of time. They also will survive this unforeseen test of our system of capitalism. Free markets demand efficiencies, and there's no better time to prove you're worth keeping on the payroll.

Keep trucking my brothers and sisters. Your time to shine has come upon you. Face it with determination and boldness. You will slay this dragon!

The Boogey Man Virus

Being on a dedicated account, I oftentimes go to repeat customers. Some of them I go to enough that they know me by name. Everybody has new procedures and protocols in place now to accommodate this whole "social distancing" experiment.


One of my customers had a sign up telling us to un-tarp and un-strap after driving into the building, and then lay our paperwork on the bed of the trailer. They would then unload it, sign the bills, and leave it on the trailer. It said, "Do not get out of your cab until the fork lift driver signals you with three short beeps on his horn." Then we were allowed to get out and grab our paperwork!


At the Hydro plant in Cressona, PA I headed for the guard shack just like I've done for the past five and a half years, and I find the door is locked. The guard comes to the glass door and shouts through the glass for me to stand back eight feet and he will bring my bills out and set them on the table just outside the door. Then I have to wait until I hear him lock the door back before I can advance to the table and sign my bills! He then waits for me to leave before gathering them up.


I'm about sick of this "Boogey Man" altering our everyday behavior. Before the guard closed the door behind him, as he returned to his protective lair, he looked back at me saying, "Geesh Dale, whoever thought it would get to this? I feel like I'm playing a part in a science fiction movie." He is right - that's kind of how it feels. I feel like I'm re-living an episode of "The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers."


I seriously question this whole approach to battling a virus. It seems most healthy people can deal with it successfully. If more of us could be exposed, then more of us would develop anti-bodies. That seems to me the fastest way to eliminate the threat. Why can't we concentrate on protecting our senior citizens and other highly vulnerable people while the vast numbers of healthy people develop a natural resistance to this? Avoiding a virus doesn't eliminate it. Developing an active defense mechanism kills it.


What do I know about fighting the "Boogey Man?" Nothing! I'm just a dumb truck driver who still has some modicum of common sense.


Once we have a significant part of our population with effective anti-bodies we could harvest their blood plasma and give it to the vulnerable folks. OMG, that's just too simple isn't it!


I'm not scared of the "Boogey Man," but these nut jobs in D.C. are literally frightening.

I'm Hearing Voices!

I ran through the night last night and around 0400 I parked my rig at the Harrisonburg Travel Center in Harrisonburg, VA. After sleeping for about six hours I got out of the truck to check my load and take a walk. As I was putting my foot down to the bottom step on my tractor I clearly heard a nearby and cheerful female voice say, "Good morning!"

I looked to my right - nobody in sight. My truck's open door is blocking my view in the other direction. I climb on down and close the door expecting to see the source of this voice, and there's nobody. I'm puzzling over this now and not sure I want to move out into the open. Where did this voice come from, and why haven't they revealed themselves to me? I know I heard someone greet me - where are they?

I pause for a moment, tuck my shirt into my pants, and turn around facing the side of the reefer trailer attached to the truck that parked "nose in" next to me. I'm still bewildered as to where this voice is coming from, when I hear it again saying, "Don't let me startle you." At this point I just blurt out with, "You might as well give up on that. I'm always startled when invisible people start a conversation with me." I figured that would bring them out of hiding!

Then the phantom lady says, "I'm down here. I didn't want you to be surprised if you spotted me." So, I look down, and there she is. She's laying on the ground underneath the reefer! She's an owner/operator laying underneath her trailer repairing a leaking air line! I gave her a hand and was relieved to know that I wasn't "hearing voices."

It was funny to me. Just last week one of my son in laws asked me when I was going to retire. I told him, "When I start talking nonsense and soiling my pants, I believe I will go home and be as much trouble as I can to my kids!" Then all of a sudden I'm hearing voices in the truck stop parking lot. I thought, okay my time may be getting near. I'm happy and relieved to know I may have a few more years left in me to keep chasing that white line.

Keep trucking my friends, and just ignore those voices if you're hearing them.